Ancient DNA sequencing secrets!The source of this plague was found

Text ｜ Li Muzi

A study of the ancient genome shows that in a plague of Gilgisstan today in the 14th century, many people died of the Yelson bacterium strain that caused the plague. Death.

Related results were published on June 15th in "Nature".

"This is like finding a place where all strains gather." Said Johannes Krause, a co -person in charge of the research and Max Planck, Germany, Germany.

From 1346 to 1353, the black death raged western Eurasia, and the number of deaths in some regions was as high as 60%.

Historical records show that black death originated in eastern Eurasia: The Crimean Peninsula's cardfaus was the earliest outbreak of plague in 1346, while Caucasus and other regions of Central Asia were considered potential "earthquakes."

Kara-Djigach Cemetery carved by the Ceramics of the Black Deadly Ceramics Cemetery. Picture source: nature

A few years ago, PHILIP Slavin, the common author of the University of Star from the University of Star from the United Kingdom, accidentally discovered some records in the 14th -century cemetery of Kyrgyzstan in Kyrgyzstan. He believes that these records may provide the origin of black death. clue.

There are a large number of tombstones in the cemetery, known as Kara-Djigach and Burana, which can be traced back to 1338 and 1339, of which 10 tombstones clearly mention a plague.

To determine whether these tombstones are related to the later black death, Slavin and Krause found some remains from the cemetery together.

The research team led by the Archaeologist Maria Spyrou University in Germany sequenced the ancient DNA of 7 remains, and found the DNA in Kara-Djigach's three tombs.

A complete pair of plagorus genome collected from the data shows that these bacteria are direct ancestors of strains related to black death, including the KRAUSE team in 2011 in the London of London, England.

The strain of Kara-Djigach is also the ancestor of most plague spectrum today.

"This is a sign of the diversity of plagorus in the outbreak of the black death." Krause said, "This is like a big explosion of plague."

Other evidence shows that black death originated in Central Asia.

Among the modern strains of plagorus, samples collected from Kyegistein, Kazakhstan and other places and other roden animals have the most closely related to the Kara-Djigach strains.

Rodges are natural hosts of plague, and humans can only suffer from plague only when they spread infection such as flea.

Krause suspected that the close contact between humans and infected marmot caused the epidemic situation of Kyrgyzstan at that time, and the unpopular mouse group in the European immune system promoted black death.

Slavin said that Central Asia is the "earthquake" of black death.

The region is located on the ancient Silk Road Trade Line. It is found in the Gracks of Kyrgyzstan, and the pearls from the Indian Ocean, corals and foreign coins from the Indian Ocean, which indicates that distant goods pass through the region.

"We can assume that long -distance and regional trade have played an important role in spreading the pathogen to the west."

Monica Green, a medieval historian and an independent scholar in the United States, said that obtaining genomes from the ancestral plague bacteria of the black death is "a huge breakthrough."

The University of Copenhagen, Danish, computing biologists Simon Rasmussen, added that "obtaining more plague samples from ancient Asia will be very interesting, because this will provide more evidence for the first and second (plague) origin. "

Related thesis information:

https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01673-4

"China Science News" (2022-06-17 The 2nd edition of the original title "Ancient DNA reveals the origin of black death")

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